PR THE CAUSE 

005 Poems of the War 



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Laurence Binyoia 




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THE CAUSE 

POEMS OF THE WAR 



THE CAUSE 



POEMS OF THE WAR 



BY 

LAURENCE ^INYON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(£frc Ctibcrs'i&e press Cambri&0e 
1917 






COPYRIGHT, I917, BY LAURENCE BINYON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March IQ17 



/.JO 

MAR 20 1917 

©0I.A455954 



NOTE 

Acknowledgments are due to the Editors of 
the periodicals, English and American, in which most 
of the poems in this volume originally appeared, for 
leave to reprint them: also to Messrs. Methuen & 
Co. for permission to reprint 'Europe, 1901 ' from 
The Death of Adam, and Other Poems (1903), and 
to Mr. Heinemann for permission to reprint ' Thunder 
on the Downs ' from Auguries (191 2). 



CONTENTS 



PRELUDES: 
EUROPE, MDCCCCI 
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 
THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 
I9I4-I9I6: 

THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 
ODE FOR SEPTEMBER 
THE ANTAGONISTS 
TO WOMEN 
FOR TH£ FALLEN 
THE BEREAVED 
STRANGE FRUIT 
THE HARVEST 
THE NEW IDOL 
THE CAUSE 
TO THE BELGIANS 
LOUVAIN . 
ORPHANS OF FLANDERS 



3 

8 

12 



23 

25 
31 

38 
40 
42 

45 
47 
48 

49 
5i 

53 

55 



viii THE CAUSE 

TO GOETHE 57 

YPRES 59 

AT RHEIMS 6l 

to the enemy complaining ... 64 

mid-atlantic 65 

the anvil 67 

gallipoli 68 

the healers 72 

edith cavell 74 

the deportation 78 

the zeppelin 82 

the english graves . . . . .84 

going west 87 

fetching the wounded .... 89 

the ebb of war 94 

la patrie 97 

the distant guns ioo 

men of verdun 102 

England's poet 105 

the sibyls 106 

before the dawn i 14 

to the end i 15 



PRELUDES 



EUROPE, MDCCCCI 

TO NAPOLEON 

Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire? 
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum ? 
On eagle wings dost hover nigher 
At the far rolling of the drum ? 
To see the harvest thou hast sown 
Smilest thou now, Napoleon ? 

Long had the world in blinded mirth 
Or suffering patience dreamed content, 
When lo ! like thunder over earth 
Thy challenge pealed, the skies were rent 
Thy terrible youth rose up alone 
Against the old world on its throne. 

With shuddering then the peoples gazed, 
And such a stupor bound them dumb 
As those fierce Colchian ranks amazed 
Who saw the youthful Jason come, 
And challenging the War God's name 
Step forth, his fiery yoke to tame. 
3 



THE CAUSE 

He took those dread bulls by the horn, 
Harnessed their fury to his will, 
And in the furrow swiftly torn 
The dragon's teeth abroad did spill : 
Behold, behind his trampling heel 
The furrow flowered into steel ! 

A spear, a plume, a warrior sprung — 
Armed gods in wrath by hundreds ; he 
Faced all, and full amidst them flung 
His magic helmet : instantly 
Their swords upon themselves they drew, 
And shouting each the other slew. 

But no Medean spell was thine, 

Napoleon, nor anointed charm ; 

Thy will was as a fate divine 

To wavering men who watched thine arm 

Drive on through Europe old thy plough. 

The harvest ripens even now ! 

Time's purple flauntings, king and crown, 
Old custom's tall and idle weeds, 
Were tossed aside and trampled down, 
While thou didst scatter fiery seeds, 



EUROPE, MDCCCCI 5 

That in the gendering lap of earth 
Prepared a new world's Titan birth. 

Then in thy path from underground, 
Where long benumbed in trance they froze, 
The Nations, giant forms unbound, 
Slow to their aching stature rose ; 
And through their wintry veins again 
Slow flushed the streams of life in pain. 

Thy thunder, O Napoleon, passed ; 

But these whom thou hadst stirred to life, 

Qn them the imperious doom was cast 

Of inextinguishable strife. 

For peace they long, but blood and tears 

Still blinded the tempestuous years. 

A hundred years have flown, and still 
For peace they pine ; peace tarries yet. 
These groaning armies Europe fill, 
And war's red planet hath not set. 
O mockery of peace, that gnaws 
Their hearts for so abhorred a cause ! 

Is peace so easy ? Nay, the names 
That are most dear and most divine 



THE CAUSE 

To men, are like the heavenly flames 
That farthest from possession shine. 
Peace, love, truth, freedom, unto these 
The way is through the storming seas. 

Ye wakened Nations, now no more 
You battle for a monarch's whim ; 
The cause is now in your heart's core, 
Your soul must strive through every limb ; 
They who with all their soul contend 
Bear more, but to a nobler end. 

Be patient in your strife ! And thou, 
O England, dearer than the rest ; 
England, with proud looks on thy brow, 
England, with trouble at thy breast, 
Seek on in patient fortitude 
Strong peace, most worthy to be wooed. 

Take up thy task, O nobly born ! 
With both hands grasp thy destiny. 
Easy is ignorance, easy scorn, 
And fluent pride, unworthy thee. 
Grand rolls the planet of thy fate : 
Be thy just passions also great ! 



EUROPE, MDCCCCI 

Turn from the sweet lure of content, 
Rise up among the courts of ease ; 
Be all thy will as a bow bent, 
Thy sure oncoming like thy seas. 
Purge clear within thy deep desires 
To be our burning altar-fires ! 

Then welcome peril, so it bring 
Thy true soul leaping into light ; 
A glory for our mouths to sing 
And for our deeds to match in might, 
Till thou at last our hope enthrone 
And make indeed thy peace our own. 

January 1901 



THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 

Keen comes the dizzy air 
In one tumultuous breath. 
The tower to heaven lies bare ; 
Dumb stir the streets beneath. 

Immeasurable sky 
Domes upward from the dim 
Round land, the astonished eye 
Supposes the world's rim. 

And through the sea of space 
Winds drive the furious cloud 
Silent in endless race ; 
And the tower rocks aloud. 

Mine eye now wanders wide, 
My thought now quickens keen. 
O cities, far descried, 
What ravage have you seen 

Of an enkindled world ? 
Homes blazing and hearths bare ; 

8 



THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 

Of hosts tyrannic hurled 
On pale ranks of despair, 

Who fed with warm proud blood 
The cause unquenchable, 
For which your heroes stood, 
For which our Sidney fell ; 

Sidney, whose starry fame, 
Mirrored in noble song, 
Shines, all our sloth to shame, 
And arms us against wrong ; 

Bright star, that seems to burn 
Over yon English shore, 
Whither my feet return, 
And my thoughts run before ; 

Run with this rumour brought 
By the wild wind's alarms, 
Dark sounds with battle fraught, 
Menace of distant arms. 

O menace harsh, but vain ! 
For what can peril do 



io THE CAUSE 

But search our souls again 
To sift and find the true ? 

Prove if the sap of old 
Shoots yet from the old seed, 
If faith be still unsold, 
If truth be truth indeed ? 

Welcome the blast that shakes 
The wall wherein we have lain 
Slumbering, our heart awakes 
And rends the prison chain. 

Turn we from prosperous toys 
And the dull name of ease; 
Rather than tarnished joys 
Face we the angry seas I 

Or if old age infirm 
Be in our veins congealed, 
Bow we to Time, our term 
Fulfilled, and proudly yield. 

Not each to each we are made, 
Not each to each we fall, 



THE BELFRY OF BRUGES n 

But every true part played 
Quickens the heart of all 

That feeds and moves and fires 
The many-peopled lands, 
And in our languor tires 
But in our strength expands. 

For forward-gazing eyes 
Fate shall no terror keep. 
She in our own breast lies : 
Now let her wake from sleep ! 
1898 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 

Wide earth, wide heaven, and in the summer 

air 
Silence ! The summit of the Down is bare 
Between the climbing crests of wood ; but 

those 
Great sea-winds, wont, when the wet South- 
West blows, 
To rock tall beeches and strong oaks aloud 
And strew torn leaves upon the streaming cloud 
To-day are idle, slumbering far aloof. 
Under the solemn height and gorgeous roof 
Of cloud-built sky, all earth is indolent. 
Wandering hum of bees and thy my scent 
Of the short turf enrich pure loneliness ; 
Scarcely an airy topmost-twining tress 
Of bryony quivers where the thorn it 

wreathes ; 
Hot fragrance from the honeysuckle 

breathes ; 
And sweet the rose floats on the arching brier's 
Green fountain, sprayed with delicate frail fires. 

12 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 13 

For clumps of thicket, dark beneath the 

blaze 
Of the high westering sun, beset the ways 
Of smooth grass narrowing where the slope 

runs steep 
Down to green woods, and glowing shadows 

keep 
A freshness round the mossy roots, and cool 
The light that sleeps as in a chequered pool 
Of golden air. O woods, I love you well, 
I love the flowers you hide, your ferny smell ; 
But here is sweeter solitude, for here 
My heart breathes heavenly space ; the sky is 

near 
To thought, with heights that fathomlessly 

glow ; 
And the eye wanders the wide land below. 

And this is England ! June's undarkened green 
Gleams on far woods ; and in the vales be- 
tween 
Grey hamlets, older than the trees that shade 
Their ripening meadows, are in quiet laid, 
Themselves a part of the warm, fruitful ground. 
The little hills of England rise around ; 



i 4 THE CAUSE 

The little streams that wander from them 

shine 
And with their names remembered names 

entwine 
Of old renown and honour, fields of blood 
High causes fought on, stubborn hardihood 
For freedom spent, and songs, our noblest 

pride, 
That in the heart of England never died 
And, burning still, make splendour of our 

tongue. 
Glories enacted, spoken, suffered, sung 1 
You lie emblazoned on this land now sleep- 
ing ; 
And southward, over leagues of forest sweep- 
ing 
White on the verge glistens the famous sea, 
That English wave, on which so haughtily 
Towered her sails, and one sail homeward bore 
Past capes of silently lamenting shore 
Victory's dearest dead. O shores of home, 
Since by the vanished watch-fire shields of 

Rome 
Dinted this upland turf, what hearts have ached 
To see you far away, what eyes have waked 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 15 

Ere dawn to watch those cliffs of long desire 
One after one rise in their voiceless choir 
Out of the twilight over the rough blue 
Like music ! . . . 

But now heavy gleams imbrue 
The inland air. Breathless the valleys hold 
Their colours in a veil of sultry gold 
With mingled shadows that have ceased to 

crawl ; 
For far in heaven is thunder ! Over all 
A single cloud in slow magnificence 
Climbs like a mountain, gradual and immense, 
With awful head unstirring, and moved on 
Against the zenith, towers above the sun. 
And still it thickens luminous fold on fold 
Of fatal colour, ominously scrolled 
And fleeced with fire ; above the sun it towers 
Like some vast thought quickening a world not 

ours 
Remote in the waste blue, as if behind 
Its rim were splendour that could smite us 

blind, 
So doom-piled and intense it crests heaven's 

height 
And mounting makes a menace of the light. 



1 6 THE CAUSE 

A menace ! Yes, for when light comes, we 

fear. 
Light that may touch, as the pure angel-spear, 
Us to ourselves, make visible, make start 
The apparition of the very heart 
And mystery of our thoughts, awaked from 

under 
The mask of cheating habit, and to thunder 
Bare in a moment of white fire what we 
Have feared and fled, our own reality. 

And if a lightning now were loosed in flame 
Out of the darkness of the cloud to claim 
Thy heart, O England, how wouldst thou be 

known 
In that hour ? How to the quick core be shown 
And seen ? What cry should from thy very soul 
Answer the judgment of that thunder-roll? 

I hear a voice arraign thee. " Where is now 
The exaltation that once lit thy brow? 
Thou countest all thy ocean-sundered lands. 
Thou heapest up the labours of thy hands, 
Thou seest all thy ships upon the seas. 
But in thine own heart mean idolatries 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 17 

Usurp devotion, choke thee and annul 
Noble excess of spirit, and make dull 
Thine eyes, enfleshed with much dominion. 
Art thou so great and is the glory gone ? 
Do these bespeak thy freedom who deflower 
Time, and make barren every senseless hour, 
Who from themselves hurry, like men afraid 
Lest what they are be to themselves betrayed ? 
Or those who in their huddled thousands 

sweat 
To buy the sleep that helps them to forget ? — 
Life lies unused, life in its loveliness! 
While the cry ravens still, ' Possess, Possess I ' 
And there is no possession. All the lust 
Of gainful man is quieted in dust ; 
His faith, his fear, his joy, his doom he owns, 
No more : the rest is parcelled with his bones 
Save what the imagination of his heart 
Can to the labour of his hands impart, 
Making stones serve his spirit's desire, and 

breathe. 
But thou, what dost thou to the world be- 
queath, 
Who gatherest riches in a waste of mind 
Unto what end, O confidently blind, 



1 8 THE CAUSE 

Forgetful of the things that grow not old 
And alone live and are not bought or sold ! " 

Speaks that voice truth? Is it for this that 

great 
And tender spirits suffered scorn and hate, 
Loved to the utmost, poured themselves, gave 

all 
Nor counted cost, spirits imperial ? 
Where are they now, they that our memory 

guard 
Among the nations ? Shall I say, enstarred 
And throned aloof ? No, not from heavens of 

thought 
Watching our muddied brief procession, not 
Judges sublime above us, without share 
In our thronged ways of struggle, hope, despair, 
But in our blood, our dreams, our deeds they 

stir, 
Strive on our lips for language, shame and spur 
The sluggard in us, out of darkness come 
Like summoned champions when the world is 

dumb; 
Within our hearts they wait with all they gave : 
Woe to us, woe, if we become their grave ! 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 19 

It shall not be. Darken thy pall, and trail, 
Thunder of heaven, above the valleys pale ! 
Another England in my vision glows. 
And she is armed within ; at last she knows 
Herself, and what to her own soul belongs. 
Mid the world's irremediable wrongs 
She keeps her faith ; and nothing of her name 
Or of her handiwork but doth proclaim 
Her purpose. Her own soul hath made her free, 
Not circumstance ; she knows no victory 
Save of the mind : in her is nothing done, 
No wrong, no shame, no glory of any one, 
But is the cause of all and each, a thing 
Felt like a fire to kindle and to sting 
The proud blood of a nation. On her brows 
Is hope ; her body doth her spirit house 
Express and eloquent, not numb and frore ; 
And her voice echoes over sea and shore, 
And all the lands and isles that are her own 
In choric interchange and antiphon 
Answer, as fancy hears in yonder cloud 
From vale to vale repeated low and loud 
The still-suspended thunder. 

Hearts of Youth, 
High-beating, ardent, quick in hope and ruth 



20 THE CAUSE 

And noble anger, O wherever now 
You dedicate your uncorrupted vow 
To be an energy of Light, a sword 
Of the ever-living Will, amid abhorred 
Din of the reeking street and populous den 
Where under the great stars blind lusts of 

men 
War on each other, or escaped to hills 
Where peace the solitary evening fills, 
Or far remote on other soils of earth 
Keeping the dearness of your fathers' hearth 
On vast plains of the West, or Austral strands 
Of the warm under-world, or storied lands 
Of the orient sun, or over ocean ways 
Stemming the wave through blue or stormy 

days, 
Wherever, as the circling light slopes round, 
On human lips is heard an English sound, 
O scattered, silent, hidden and unknown, 
Be lifted up, for you are not alone ! 
High-beating hearts, to your deep vows be 

true! 
Live out your dreams, for England lives in you. 

Midsummer 191 1 



I9i4- I 9 1 ^ 



THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 

Now in thy splendour go before us, 
Spirit of England, ardent-eyed, 
Enkindle this dear earth that bore us, 
In the hour of peril purified. 

The cares we hugged drop out of vision ; 
Our hearts with deeper thoughts dilate. 
We step from days of sour division 
Into the grandeur of our fate. 

For us the glorious dead have striven, 
They battled that we might be free. 
We to their living cause are given ; 
We arm for men that are to be. 

Among the nations nobliest chartered, 
England recalls her heritage. 
In her is that which is not bartered, 
Which force can neither quell nor cage. 

For her immortal stars are burning, 
With her the hope that 's never done, 
23 



24 THE CAUSE 

The seed that 's in the Spring's returning, 
The very flower that seeks the sun. 

She fights the fraud that feeds desire on 
Lies, in a lust to enslave or kill, 
The barren creed of blood and iron, 
Vampire of Europe's wasted will . . . 

Endure, O Earth ! and thou, awaken, 
Purged by this dreadful winnowing-fan, 
O wronged, untameable, unshaken 
Soul of divinely suffering man. 



ODE FOR SEPTEMBER 



On that long day when England held her 

breath, 
Suddenly gripped at heart 
And called to choose her part 
Between her loyal soul and luring sophistries, 
We watched the wide, green-bosomed land 

beneath 
Driven and tumultuous skies ; 
We watched the volley of white shower after 

shower 
Desolate with fierce drops the fallen flower ; 
And still the rain's retreat 
Drew glory on its track, 
And still, when all was darkness and defeat, 
Upon dissolving cloud the bow of peace shone 

back. 
So in our hearts was alternating beat, 
With very dread elate ; 
And Earth dyed all her day in colours of our 

fate. 

25 



26 THE CAUSE 

ii 

But oh, how faint the image we foretold 

In fancies of our fear 

Now that the truth is here ! 

And we awake from dream yet think it still a 

dream, 
It bursts our thoughts with more than thought 

can hold ; 
And more than human seem 
These agonies of conflict ; Elements 
At war ! yet not with vast indifference 
Casually crushing; nay, 
It is as if were hurled 
Lightnings that murdered, seeking out their 

prey; 
As if an earthquake shook to chaos half the 

world, 
Equal in purpose as in power to slay ; 
And thunder stunned our ears 
Streaming in rain of blood on torrents that are 

tears. 

in 

Around a planet rolls the drum's alarm. 
Far where the summer smiles 



ODE FOR SEPTEMBER 27 

Upon the utmost isles, 

Danger is treading silent as a fever-breath. 

Now in the North the secret waters arm ; 

Under the wave is Death : 

They fight in the very air, the virgin air, 

Hovering on fierce wings to the onset : there 

Nations to battle stream ; 

Earth smokes and cities burn ; 

Heaven thickens in a storm of shells that 

scream ; 
The long lines shattering break, turn and 

again return ; 
And still across a continent they teem, 
Moving in myriads ; more 
Than ranks of flesh and blood, but soul with 

soul at war ! 

IV 

All the hells are awake : the old serpents hiss 

From dungeons of the mind ; 

Fury of hate born blind, 

Madness and lust, despairs and treacheries 

unclean ; 
They shudder up from man's most dark abyss. 
But there are heavens serene 



28 THE CAUSE 

That answer strength with strength ; they 

stand secure ; 
They arm us from within, and we endure. 
Now are the brave more brave, 
Now is the cause more dear, 
The more the tempests of the darkness rave, 
As, when the sun goes down, the shining stars 

are clear. 
Radiant the spirit rushes to the grave. 
Glorious it is to live 
In such an hour, but life is lovelier yet to give. 



Alas ! what comfort for the uncomforted, 

Who knew no cause, nor sought 

Glory or gain ? they are taught, 

Homeless in homes that burn, what human 

hearts can bear. 
The children stumble over their dear dead, 
Wandering they know not where. 
And there is one who simply fights, obeys, 
Tramps, till he loses count of nights and days, 
Tired, mired in dust and sweat, 
Far from his own hearth-stone ; 
A common man of common earth, and yet 



ODE FOR SEPTEMBER 29 

The battle-winner he, a man of no renown, 
Where "food for cannon" pays a nation's debt. 
This is Earth's hero, whom 
The pride of Empire tosses careless to his 
doom. 

VI 

Now will we speak, while we have eyes for tears 

And fibres to be wrung 

And in our mouths a tongue. 

We will bear wrongs untold but will not only 

bear ; 
Not only bear, but build through striving years 
The answer of our prayer, 
That whatsoever has the noble name 
Of man, shall not be yoked to alien shame ; 
That life shall be indeed 
Life, not permitted breath 
Of spirits wrenched and forced to others' need, 
Robbed of their nature's joy and free alone in 

death. 
The world shall travail in that cause," shall bleed, 
But deep in hope it dwells 
Until the morning break which the long night 

foretells. 



30 THE CAUSE 

VII 

O children filled with your own airy glee 

Or with a grief that comes 

So swift, so strange, it numbs, 

If on your growing youth this page of terror 
bite, 

Harden not then your senses, feel and be 

The promise of the light. 

O heirs of Man, keep in your hearts not less 

The divine torrents of his tenderness 1 

'T is ever war : but rust 

Grows on the sword ; the tale 

Of earth is strewn with empires heaped in dust 

Because they dreamed that force should pun- 
ish and prevail. 

The will to kindness lives beyond their lust ; 

Their grandeurs are undone : 

Deep, deep within man's soul are all his vic- 
tories won. 



THE ANTAGONISTS 



Caverns mouthed with blackness more than 

night, 
Fever-jungle deep in strangling brier, 
Venom-breeding slime that loathest light, 
Who has plumbed your secret ? who the blind 

desire 
Hissing from the viper's lifted jaws, 
Maddening the beast with scent of prey 
Tracked through savage glooms on robber paws 
Till the slaughter gluts him red and reeking ? 

Nay, 
Man, this breathing mystery, this intense 
Body beautiful with thinking eyes, 
Master of a spirit outsoaring sense, 
Spirit of tears and laughter, who has measured 

all the skies, — 
Is he also the lair 
Of a lust, of a sting 
That hides from the air 
Yet is lurking to spring 
31 



32 THE CAUSE 

From the nescient core 

Of his fibre, alert 

At the trumpet of war 

And hungry to hurt, 

When he hears from abysses of time 

Aboriginal mutters, replying 

To something he knew not within him, 

And the Demon of Earth crying : 

" I am the will of the Fire 
That bursts into boundless fury ; 
I am my own implacable desire. 

"lam the will of the Sea 
That shoulders the ships and breaks them ; 
There is none other but me." 

Heavy forests bred them, 

The race that dreamed. 

In the bones of savage earth 

Their dreams had birth : 

Darkness fed them. 

And the full brain grossly teemed 

With thoughts compressed, with rages 

Obstinate, stark, obscure — 



THE ANTAGONISTS 33 

Thirsts no time assuages, 

But centuries immure. 

As the sap of trees, behind 

Crumpled bark of bossy boles, 

Presses up its juices blind, 

Buried within their souls 

The dream insatiate still 

Nursed its fierceness old 

And violent will, 

Haunted with twilight where the Gods drink 

full 
Ere they renew their revelry of slaying, 
And warriors leap like the lion on the bull, 
And harsh horns in the northern mist are 

braying. 
Tenebrous in them lay the dream 
Like a fire that under ashes 
Smoulders heavy-heaped and dim 
Yet with spurted stealthy flashes 
Sends a goblin shadow floating 
Crooked on the rafters — then 
Sudden from its den 
Springs in splendour. So should burst 
Destiny from dream, from thirst 
Rapture gloating 



34 THE CAUSE 

On a vision of earth afar 

Stretched for a prize and a prey ; 

And the secular might of the Gods re-risen 

Savage and glorious, waiting its day, 

Should shatter its ancient prison 

And leap like the panther to slay, 

Magnificent I Storm, then, and thunder 

The haughty to crush with the tame, 

For the world is the strong man's plunder 

Whose coming is swifter than flame ; 

And the nations unready, decayed, 

Unworthy of fate or afraid, 

Shall be stricken and torn asunder 

Or yield in shame. 

The Dream is fulfilled. 

Is it this that you willed, 

O patient ones ? 

For this that you gave 

Young to the grave 

Your valiant sons ? 

For this that you wore 

Brave faces, and bore 

The burden heart-breaking — 

Sublimely deceived, 



THE ANTAGONISTS 35 

You that bled and believed — 
For the Dream ? or the Waking ? 

ii 

No drum-beat, pulsing challenge and desire, 
Sounded, no jubilant boast nor fierce alarm 
Cried throbbing from enfevered throats afire 
For glory, when from vineyard, forge, and 

farm, 
From wharf and warehouse, foundry, shop, 

and school, 
From, the unreaped cornfield and the office- 
stool 
France called her sons ; but loth, but grave, 
But silent, with their purpose proud and hard 
Within them, as of men that go to guard 
More than life, yet to dare 
More than death : France, it was their France 

to save ! 
Nor now the fiery legend of old fames 
And that imperial Eagle whose wide wings 
Hovered from Vistula to Finistere, 
Who plucked the crown from Kings, 
Filled her ; but France was arming in her 
mind : 



36 THE CAUSE 

The world unborn and helpless, not the past 
Victorious with banners, called her on ; 
And she assembled not her sons alone 
From city and hamlet, coast and heath and 

hill, 
But deep within her bosom, deeper still 
Than any fear could search, than any hope 

could blind, 
Beyond all clamours of her recent day, 
Hot smouldering of the faction and the fray, 
She summoned her own soul. In the hour of 

night, 
In the hush that felt the armed tread of her 

foes, 
Like a star, silent out of seas, it rose. 

Most human France ! In those clear eyes of 

light 
Was vision of the issue, and all the cost 
To the last drop of generous blood, the last 
Tears of the orphan and the widow ; and yet 
She shrank not from the terror of the debt, 
Seeing what else were with the cause undone, 
The very skies barred with an iron threat, 
The very mind of freedom lost 



THE ANTAGONISTS 37 

Beneath that shadow bulked across the sun. 

Therefore did she abstain 

From all that had renowned her, all that won 

The world's delight : thought-stilled 

With deep reality to the heart she burned, 

And took upon her all the load of pain 

Foreknown ; and her sons turned 

From wife's and children's kiss 

Simply, and steady-willed 

With quiet eyes, with courage keen and clear, 

Faced Eastward. — If an English voice she 

hear, 
That has no speech worthy of her, let this 
Be of that day remembered, with what pride 
Our ancient island thrilled to the oceans wide, 
And our hearts leapt to know that England 

then, 
Equal in faith of free and loyal men, 
Stept to her side. 



TO WOMEN 

Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts 
That have foreknown the utter price. 
Your hearts burn upward like a flame 
Of splendour and of sacrifice. 

For you, you too, to battle go, 

Not with the marching drums and cheers 

But in the watch of solitude 

And through the boundless night of fears. 

Swift, swifter than those hawks of war, 
Those threatening wings that pulse the air, 
Far as the vanward ranks are set, 
You are gone before them, you are there ! 

And not a shot comes blind with death 
And not a stab of steel is pressed 
Home, but invisibly it tore 
And entered first a woman's breast. 

Amid the thunder of the guns, 
The lightnings of the lance and sword 
38 



TO WOMEN 39 

Your hope, your dread, your throbbing pride, 
Your infinite passion is outpoured 

From hearts that are as one high heart 
Withholding naught from doom and bale, 
Burningly offered up, — to bleed, 
To bear, to break, but not to fail I 



FOR THE FALLEN 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her 

children, 
England mourns for her dead across the sea. 
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill : Death august and 

royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. 
There is music in the midst of desolation 
And a glory that shines upon our tears. 

They went with songs to the battle, they were 

young, 
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. 
They were staunch to the end against odds 

uncounted, 
They fell with their faces to the foe. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left 
grow old : 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years con- 
demn. 

40 



FOR THE FALLEN 41 

At the going down of the sun and in the 

morning 
We will remember them. 

They mingle not with their laughing comrades 
again ; 

They sit no more at familiar tables of home ; 

They have no lot in our labour of the day- 
time; 

They sleep beyond England's foam. 

But where our desires are and our hopes pro- 
found, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, 

To the innermost heart of their own land they 
are known 

As the stars are known to the Night ; 

As the stars that shall be bright when we are 

dust, 
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, 
As the stars that are starry in the time of our 

darkness, 
To the end, to the end, they remain. 



THE BEREAVED 

We grudged not those that were dearer than 
all we possessed, 

Lovers, brothers, sons. 
Our hearts were full, and out of a full heart 

We gave our beloved ones. 

Because we loved, we gave. In the hardest hour 
When at last — so much unsaid 

In the eyes — they went, simply, with tender 
smile, 
Our hearts to the end they read. 

They to their deeds ! To things that their 
soul hated 
And yet to splendours won 
From smoking hell by the spirit that moved 
in them ; 
But we to endure alone. 

Their hearts rested on ours ; their homing 
thoughts 
Met ours in the still of the night. 
42 



THE BEREAVED 43 

We ached with the ache of the long waiting, 
and throbbed 
With the throbs of the surging fight. 



O had we failed them, then were we desolate 
now 
And separated indeed. 
What should have comforted, what should have 
helped us then 
In the time of our bitter need 1 

But now, though sorrow be ever fresh, sor- 
row 
Is tender as love ; it knows 
That of love it was born, and Love with the 
shining eyes 
The hard way chose. 

And out of deeps eternal, night and day, 

A strength our sorrow frees, 
Flooding us, full as the tide up the rivers 
flows 

From the depth of the silent seas, 



44 THE CAUSE 

A strength that is mightier far than we, yet 
a strength 
Whereof our spirit is breath, 
Hope of the world, that is strange to hazard 
and fear, 
And the wounds of Time, and Death. 



STRANGE FRUIT 

This year the grain is heavy-ripe ; 
The apple shows a ruddier stripe ; 
Never berries so profuse 
Blackened with so sweet a juice 
On brambly hedges, summer-dyed. 
The yellow leaves begin to glide ; 
But Earth in careless lap-ful treasures 
Pledge of over-brimming measures, 
As if some rich unwonted zest 
Stirred prodigal within her breast. 
And now, while plenty 's left uncared, 
The fruit unplucked, the sickle spared, 
Where men go forth to waste and spill, 
Toiling to burn, destroy, and kill, 
Lo, also side by side with these 
Beast-hungers, ravening miseries, 
The heart of man has brought to birth 
Splendours richer than his earth. 
Now in the thunder-hour of fate 
Each one is kinder to his mate ; 
45 



46 THE CAUSE 

The surly smile ; the hard forbear ; 
There 's help and hope for all to share ; 
And sudden visions of good-will, 
Transcending all the scope of ill, 
Like a glory of rare weather 
Link us in common light together, 
A clearness of the cleansing sun, 
Where none 's alone and all are one ; 
And touching each a priceless pain 
We find our own true hearts again. 
No more the easy masks deceive : 
We give, we dare, and we believe. 



THE HARVEST 

Red reapers under these sad August skies, 
Proud War-Lords, careless of ten thousand 

dead, 
Who leave earth's kindly crops unharvested 
As you have left the kindness of the wise 
For brutal menace and for clumsy lies, 
The spawn of insolence by bragging fed, 
With power and fraud in faith's and honour's 

stead, 
Accounting these but good stupidities ; 

You reap a heavier harvest than you know. 

Disnaturing a nation, you have thieved 

Her name, her patient genius, while you 

thought 
To fool the world and master it. You sought 
Reality. It comes in hate and woe. 
In the end you also shall not be deceived. 
47 



THE NEW IDOL 

Magnificent the Beast ! Look in the eyes 
Of the fell tiger towering on his prey, 
Beautiful in his power to pounce and slay 
And effortless in action. He denies 
All but himself. He gloats on his weak prize, 
Roaring the anger of wild beast at bay, 
Blank anger like an element whose way 
Is mere annihilation ! Terrible eyes 1 

But there is one more to be feared, who can 
Escape the prison of his own wrath ; whose 

will 
Lives beyond life ; who smiles with quiet lips ; 
Most terrible because most tender, Man, — 
Not only uncowed but irresistible 
When the cause fires him to the finger-tips. 
48 



THE CAUSE 

Out of these throes that search and sear 
What is it so deep arises in us 
Above the shaken thoughts of fear, — 
Whatever thread the Fates may spin us, - 
Above the horror that would drown 
And tempest that would strike us down ? 

It is to stand in cleansing light, 

The cloud of dullard habit lifted, 

To use a certainty of sight 

And breathe an air by peril sifted, 

The things that once we deemed of price 

Consumed in smoke of sacrifice. 

It is to feel the world we knew 
Changed to a wonder past our knowing ; 
The grass, the trees, the skiey blue, 
The very stones are inly glowing 
With something infinite behind 
These shadows, ardently divined. 
49 



50 THE CAUSE 

We went our ways ; each bosom bore 
Its spark of separate desire ; 
But each now kindles to the core 
With faith from this transfusing fire, 
Whereto our inmost longings run 
To be made infinitely one 

With that which nothing can destroy, 
Which lives when all is crushed and taken, 
The home of dearer than our joy, 
By all save by the soul forsaken, — 
The soul that strips her clean of care 
Because she breathes her native air, 

Yet not in scorn of lovely earth 
And human sweetness born of living, 
For these are grown of dearer worth, 
A gift more precious in the giving, 
Since through this raiment's hues and lines 
The glory of the spirit shines. 

Faces of radiant youth, that go 

Like rivers singing to the sea ! 

You count no careful cost ; you know ; 

Of that far secret you are free ; 

And life in you its splendour spending 

Sings the stars' song that has no ending. 



TO THE BELGIANS 

O race that Caesar knew, 
That won stern Roman praise, 
What land not envies you 
The laurel of these days ? 

You built your cities rich 
Around each towered hall, — 
Without, the statued niche, 
Within, the pictured wall. 

Your ship-thronged wharves, your marts 
With gorgeous Venice vied. 
Peace and her famous arts 
Were yours : though tide on tide 

Of Europe's battle scourged 
Black field and reddened soil, 
From blood and smoke emerged 
Peace and her fruitful toil. 

Yet when the challenge rang, 
" The War-Lord comes ; give room ! " 
5i 



52 THE CAUSE 

Fearless to arms you sprang 
Against the odds of doom. 

Like your own Damien 
Who sought that lepers' isle 
To die a simple man 
For men with tranquil smile, 

So strong in faith you dared 

Defy the giant, scorn 

Ignobly to be spared, 

Though trampled, spoiled, and torn, 

And in your faith arose 
And smote, and smote again, 
Till those astonished foes 
Reeled from their mounds of slain, 

The faith that the free soul, 
Untaught by force to quail, 
Through fire and dirge and dole 
Prevails and shall prevail. 

Still for your frontier stands 
The host that knew no dread, 
Your little, stubborn land's 
Nameless, immortal dead. 



LOUVAIN 

To Dom Bruno Destree, O.S.B. 
I 

It was the very heart of Peace that thrilled 
In the deep minster-bell's wide-throbbing 

sound 
When over old roofs evening seemed to build 
Security this world has never found. 

Your cloister looked from Caesar's rampart, 

high 
O'er the fair city : clustered orchard-trees 
Married their murmur with the dreaming sky. 
It was the house of lore and living peace. 

And there we talked of youth's delightful years 
In Italy, in England. Now, O Friend, 
I know not if I speak to living ears 
Or if upon you too is come the end. 

Peace is on Louvain ; dead peace of spilt blood 
Upon the mounded ashes where she stood. 
53 



54 THE CAUSE 

ii 

But from that blood, those ashes there arose 
Not hoped-for terror cowering as it ran, 
But divine anger flaming upon those 
Defamers of the very name of man, 

Abortions of their blind hyena-creed, 
Who for " protection " of their battle-host 
Against the unarmed of them they had made 

to bleed, 
Whose hearts they had tortured to the utter- 
most 

Without a cause, past pardon, fired and tore 
The towers of fame and beauty, while they shot 
And butchered the defenceless in the door. 
But History shall hang them high, to rot 

Unburied, in the face of times unborn, 
Mankind's abomination and last scorn. 



ORPHANS OF FLANDERS 

Where is the land that fathered, nourished, 

poured 
The sap of a strong race into your veins, 
Land of wide tilth, of farms and granaries 

stored, 
Of old towers chiming over peaceful plains ? 

It is become a vision, barred away- 
Like light in cloud, a memory and belief. 
On those lost plains the Glory of yesterday 
Builds her dark towers for the bells of Grief. 

It is become a splendour-circled name 

For all the world ; a torch against the skies 

Burns on that blood-spot, the unpardoned 

shame 
Of them that conquered : but your homeless 

eyes 

See rather some brown pond by a white wall, 
Red cattle crowding in the rutty lane, 
55 



56 THE CAUSE 

A garden where the hollyhocks were tall 
In the Augusts that shall never be again. 

There your thoughts cling as the long-thrust- 
ing root 

Clings in the ground ; your orphaned hearts are 
there. 

O mates of sunburnt earth, your love is mute 

But strong like thirst and deeper than despair. 

You have endured what pity can but grope 
To feel : into that darkness enters none. 
We have but hands to help ; yours is the hope 
Whose courage rises silent with the sun. 



TO GOETHE 

Goethe, who saw and who foretold 

A world revealed 
New-springing from its ashes old 

On Valmy field, 

When Prussia's sullen hosts retired 

Before the advance 
Of ragged, starved, but freedom-fired 

Soldiers of France ; 

If still those clear, Olympian eyes 

Through smoke and rage 
Your ancient Europe scrutinize, 

What think you, Sage ? 

Are these the armies of the Light 

That seek to drown 
The light of lands where freedom's fight 

Has won renown ? 

Will they blot also out your name 
Because you praise 
57 



58 THE CAUSE 

All works of men that shrine the flame 
Of beauty's ways, 

Wherever men have proved them great, 

Nor, drunk with pride, 
Saw but a single swollen State 

And naught beside, 

Nor dreamed of drilling Europe's mind 

With threat and blow 
The way professors have designed 

Genius should go ? 

Or shall a people rise at length 

And see, and shake 
The fetters from its giant strength, 

And grandly break 

This pedantry of feud and force, 

To man untrue, 
Thundering and blundering on its course 

To death and rue ? 



YPRES 

On the road to Ypres, on the long road, 

Marching strong, 
We '11 sing a song of Ypres, of her glory 

And her wrong. 

Proud rose her towers in the old time, 

Long ago. 
Trees stood on her ramparts, and the water 

Lay below. 

Shattered are the towers into potsherds — 

Jumbled stones. 
Underneath the ashes that were rafters 

Whiten bones. 

Blood is in the cellar where the wine was, 

On the floor. 
Rats run on the pavement where the wives met 

At the door. 

But in Ypres there 's an army that is biding, 
Seen of none. 

59 



60 THE CAUSE 

You 'd never hear their tramp nor see their 
shadow 
In the sun. 

Thousands of the dead men there are waiting 

Through the night, 
Waiting for a bugle in the cold dawn 

Blown for fight. 

Listen when the bugle 's calling Forward ! 

They '11 be found, 
Dead men, risen in battalions 

From underground, 

Charging with us home, and through the foe- 
men 

Driving fear 
Swifter than the madness in a madman, 

As they hear 

Dead men ring the bells of Ypres 

For a sign, 
Hear the bells and fear them in the Hunland 

Over Rhine ! 



AT RHEIMS 

Their hearts were burning in their breasts 

Too hot for curse or cries. 
They stared upon the towers that burned 

Before their smarting eyes. 

There where, since France began to be, 

Anointed kings knelt down, 
There where the Maid, the unafraid, 

Received her vision's crown, 

The senseless shell with nightmare scream 

Burst, and fair fragments fell 
Torn from their centuries of peace 

As by the rage of hell. 

What help for wrath, what use for wail ? 

Before a dumb despair 
All ancient, high, heroic France 

Seemed burning, bleeding there. 



61 



62 THE CAUSE 

Within, the pillars soar to gloom 
Lit by the glimmering Rose ; 

Spirits of beauty shrined in stone 
Afar from mortal woes, 

Hearing not, though their haunted shade 

Is stricken, and all around 
With splintering flash and brutal crash 

The ghostly aisles resound. 

And there, upon the pavement stretched, 
The German wounded groan 

To see the dropping flames of death 
And feel the shells their own. 

Too fierce the fire ! Helped by their foes 

They stagger out to air. 
The green-grey coats are seen, are known 

Through all the crowded square. 



Ah. now for vengeance ! Deep the groan 

A death-knell ! Quietly 
Soldiers unsling their rifles, lift 

And aim with steady eye. 



AT RHEIMS 63 

But sudden in the hush between 

Death and the doomed, there stands 

Against those levelled guns a priest, 
Gentle, with outstretched hands. 

Be not as gtrilty as they ! he cries . . . 

Each lets his weapon fall, 
As if a vision showed him France 

And vengeance vain and small. 



TO THE ENEMY COMPLAINING 

Be ruthless, then; scorn slaves of scruple; 

avow 
The blow, planned with such patience, that 

you deal 
So terribly ; hack on, and care not how 
The innocent fall ; live out your faith of steel. 

Then you speak speech that we can compre- 
hend. 
It cries from the unpitied blood you spill. 
And so we stand against you, and to the end 
Flame as one man, the weapon of one will. 

But when your lips usurp the loyal phrase 
Of honour, querulously voluble 
Of " chivalry " and " kindness," and you praise 
What you despise for weakness of the fool, 

Then the gorge rises. Bleat to dupe the dead ! 

The wolf beneath the sheepskin drips too red. 

64 



MID-ATLANTIC 

If this were all ! — A dream of dread 

Ran through me; I watched the waves that 

fled 
Pale-crested out of hollows black, 
The hungry lift of helpless waves, 
A million million tossing graves, 
A wilderness without a track 
Beneath the barren moon : 
If this were all ! 

The stars of night remotely strewn 
Looked on that restless heave and fall. 
I seemed with them to watch this old 
Bright planet through the ages rolled, 
Self -tortured, burning splendours vain 
And fevered with its greeds insane 
And with the blood of peoples red ; 
I watched it, grown an ember cold, 
Join in the dancing of the dead. 

The chilly half -moon sank; the sound 
Of naked surges roared around, 
65 



66 THE CAUSE 

And through my heart the darkness poured 
Surges as of a sea unshored. 

somewhere far and lost from light 
Blind Europe battled in the night ! 
Then sudden through the darkness came 
The vision of a child, 

A child with feet as light as flame 
Who ran across the bitter waves, 
Across the tumbling of the graves — 
With arms stretched out he smiled. 

1 drank the wine of life again, 

I breathed among my brother men, 
I felt the human fire. 
I knew that I must serve the will 
Of beauty and love and wisdom still ; 
Though all my hopes were overthrown, 
Though universes turned to stone, 
I have my being in this alone 
And die in that desire. 

On board the Lusitania 
December 19 14 



THE ANVIL 

Burned from the ore's rejected dross, 

The iron whitens in the heat. 

With plangent strokes of pain and loss 

The hammers on the iron beat. 

Searched by the fire, through death and dole 

We feel the iron in our soul. 

O dreadful Forge ! if torn and bruised 
The heart, more urgent comes our cry 
Not to be spared but to be used, 
Brain, sinew, and spirit, before we die. 
Beat out the iron, edge it keen, 
And shape us to the end we mean ! 
67 



GALLIPOLI 

Isles of the iEgean, Troy, and waters of Hel- 
lespont, 
You we have known from of old 
Since boyhood stammering glorious Greek was 
entranced 
In the tale that Homer told. 
There scornful Achilles towered and flamed 
through the battle 
Defying the gods ; and there 
Hector armed, and Andromache proudly held 
up his boy to him, 
Knowing not yet despair. 

We beheld them as presences moving beauti- 
ful and swift 
In the radiant morning of Time, 
Far from reality, far from dulness of daily 
doing 
And from cities of fog and grime, — 
Unattainable day-dream, heroes, gods and god- 
desses 
Matched in splendour of war, 
68 



GALLIPOLI 69 

Days of a vanished world, days of a grandeur 
perished, 
Days that should bloom no more. 

But now shall our boyhood learn to tell a new 
tale, 
And a new song shall be sung, 
And the sound of it shall praise not magnifi- 
cence of old time 
But the glory and the greatness of the young; 
Deeds of this our own day, marvellous deeds 
of our own blood ; 
Sons that their sires excel, 
Lightly going into peril and taking death by 
the hand : — 
Of these they shall sing, they shall tell. 

How in ships sailing the famed Mediterranean 

From armed banks of Nile 
Men from far homes in sunny Austral Domin- 
ions 
And the misty mother-isle, 
Met in the great cause, joined in the vast ad- 
venture, 
Saw first in April skies, 



70 THE CAUSE 

Beyond storied islands, Gallipoli's promontory, 
Impregnably ridged, arise. 



And how from the belly of the black ship 
driven beneath 
Towering scarp and scaur 
Hailing hidden rages of fire in terrible gusts 

On the murdered space of shore, 
Into the water they leapt, they rushed, and 
across the beach 
With impetuous shout, all 
Inspired beyond men, climbed and were over 
the crest 
As a flame leaps over a wall. 

Not all the gods in heaven's miraculous pan- 
oply 
Could have hindered or stayed them, so 
Irresistibly came they, scaled the unscaleable 
and sprang 
To stab the astonished foe : 
Marvellous doers of deeds, lifted past our im- 
agining 
To a world where death is nought, 



GALLIPOLI 71 

As a spirit against spirit, as a liberated ele- 
ment, 
As fire in flesh they fought. 

Now to the old twilight and pale legendary 
glories 
By our own youth outdone, 
Those shores recede ; not there, but in mem- 
ory everlasting 
The immortal heights were won. 
Of them that triumphed, of them that fell, 
there is only now 
Silence and sleep and fame, 
And in night's immensity, far on that prom- 
ontory's altar 
The invisibly burning flame. 



THE HEALERS 

In a vision of the night I saw them, 

In the battles of the night. 
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood 

They were moving like light, 

Light of the reason, guarded 

Tense within the will, 
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs 

Burns steady and still. 

With scrutiny calm, and with fingers 

Patient as swift 
They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen 

Bodies uplift, 

Untired and defenceless ; around them 

With shrieks in its breath 
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon 

Impersonal death ; 

But they take not their courage from anger 
That blinds the hot being ; 
72 



THE HEALERS 73 

They take not their pity from weakness ; 
Tender, yet seeing; 

Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost ; 

Keen, like steel ; 
Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken 
with, 

Who shall heal? 

They endure to have eyes of the watcher 

In hell, and not swerve 
For an hour from the faith that they follow, 

The light that they serve. 

Man true to man, to his kindness 

That overflows all, 
To his spirit erect in the thunder 

When all his forts fall, — 

This light, in the tiger-mad welter 

They serve and they save. 
What song shall be worthy to sing of 
them — 

Braver than the brave ? 



EDITH CAVELL 

She was binding the wounds of her enemies 
when they came — 
The lint in her hand unrolled. 
They battered the door with their rifle-butts, 
crashed it in : 
She faced them gentle and bold. 

They haled her before the judges where they 
sat 
In their places, helmet on head. 
With question and menace the judges assailed 
her, "Yes, 
I have broken your law," she said. 

" I have tended the hurt and hidden the hunted, 
have done 
As a sister does to a brother, 
Because of a law that is greater than that you 
have made, 
Because I could do none other. * 
74 



EDITH CAVELL 75 

" Deal as you will with me. This is my choice 
to the end, 
To live in the life I vowed." 
" She is self-confessed," they cried, " she is 
self-condemned. 
She shall die, that the rest may be cowed." 

In the terrible hour of the dawn, when the 
veins are cold, 
They led her forth to the wall. 
" I have loved my land," she said, "but it is 
not enough : 
Love requires of me all. 

" I will empty my heart of the bitterness, hating 
none." 

And sweetness filled her brave 
With a vision of understanding beyond the hour 

That knelled to the waiting grave. 

They bound her eyes, but she stood as if she 
shone. 
The rifles it was that shook 
When the hoarse command rang out. They 
could not endure 
That last, that defenceless look. 



76 THE CAUSE 

And the officer strode and pistolled her surely, 
ashamed 
That men, seasoned in blood, 
Should quail at a woman, only a woman, — 
dead 
As a flower stamped in the mud. 

And now that the deed was securely done, in 
the night 
When none had known her fate, 
They answered those that had striven for her, 
day by day : 
" It is over, you come too late." 

And with many words and sorrowful-phrased 
excuse 

Argued their German right 
To kill, most legally ; hard though the duty be, 

The law must assert its might. 

Only a woman ! yet she had pity on them, 

The victim offered slain 
To the gods of fear that they worship. Leave 
them there, 

Red hands, to clutch their gain. 



EDITH CAVELL 77 

She bewailed not herself, and we will bewail her 
not 

But with tears of pride rejoice 
That an English soul was found so crystal-clear 

To be triumphant voice 

Of the human heart that dares adventure all 

But live to itself untrue, 
And beyond all laws sees love as the light in 
the night, 

As the star it must answer to. 

The hurts she healed, the thousands com- 
forted — these 
Make a fragrance of her fame. 
But because she stept to her star right on 
through death 
It is Victory speaks her name. 



THE DEPORTATION 



In vain, in vain, in vain ! 

Conqueror, you are conquered : though you 

grind 
These bodies, heel on neck ; and though you 

twist 
Out of them the exquisite last wrench of pain, 
They rise, they rise again, 
Rise quivering and eternally resist 
All cunning that all cruelty can find 
To mock the heart and lacerate the mind 
In vain, in vain ! 

ii 

The train stands packed for exile, truck on truck. 
Men thronged like oxen, pressed against each 

other, 
With worse than anger in their dangerous eyes, 
Look on their drivers, armed and helmeted, — 
Then forget all in sudden stormy cries 
As past the bayonets sister, wife, and mother 
78 



THE DEPORTATION 79 

Strain up to them, clutch fingers tight, are 

struck 
And beaten back, but struggle and press again, 
Catch desolated kisses, fight for breath 
To sob their widowed hearts out in a word 
Their man shall hear, reckless of wound or 

death 
So they come nigh him ; a farewell insane, 
A passion as if the earth that bore them heard 
And in her bones groaned ! And white children 

held 
On shoulders where the torn dress hangs in 

strips 
Cry Father ! and mute answers wring the lips 
Of the exiles, in their torture still unquelled. 

A whistle screams. The guards drive, shout, 

beat. Then 
An inspiration like an ecstasy 
Seizes these women, and they rush to throw 
Their sobbing bodies prone upon the tracks 
Before the panting engine. If their men 
Into that night of slavery must go, 
They '11 be with death before them ! Prostrate 

there, 



80 THE CAUSE 

Tear-blinded, with tense arms and heaving 

backs, 
Young wife and child and mother of grey hair 
Clutch the rails, anguished and athirst to die, 
While over them the towering engine throbs, 
Blind, ignorant, deaf, and ready. But you spare 
Such easiness of end, you who did this 
Which the sun looked on, and which History 
Shall see for ever. Though they cling with sobs 
To their own earth, frenzied and bleeding, 

swift 
They are harried up ; the bayonets prise and 

lift 
And tear away their hands' despairing grasp : 
They are tossed on either side : at the engine's 

hiss 
The wheels begin that road which curses pave 
Between those piteous heaps that cry and gasp 
Helpless, and cheated even of their grave. 

in 

But something lives and burns 
More perilous to assail 
Than flesh of bodies frail : 
It waits and it returns. 



THE DEPORTATION 81 

And when in the night you dream 
Of the day that you did this thing, 
When you see those eyes and the bayonets' 

gleam 
And the shrieks to your very heart's blood 

ring 
As you do your deed in your dream again, 
The soul of the race that you racked, to do 
Your Lord's command, that you thought to 

have cowed, 
Shall sharpen the bitterness thrice for you 
As it rises before you, crying aloud : 
You did it in vain, in vain ! 



THE ZEPPELIN 

Guns ! far and near 
Quick, sudden,' angry, 
They startle the still street. 
Upturned faces appear, 
Doors open on darkness, 
There is a hurrying of feet, 

And whirled athwart gloom 

White fingers of alarm 

Point at last there 

Where illumined and dumb 

A shape suspended 

Hovers, a demon of the starry air 

Strange and cold as a dream 
Of sinister fancy, 
It charms like a snake, 
Poised deadly in the gleam, 
While bright explosions 
Leap up to it and break. 
82 



THE ZEPPELIN 83 

Is it terror you seek 
To exult in ? Know then 
Hearts are here 
That the plunging beak 
Of night-winged murder 
Strikes not with fear 

So much as it strings 
To a deep elation 
And a quivering pride 
That at last the hour brings 
For them too the danger 
Of those who died, 

Of those who yet fight 
Spending for each of us 
Their glorious blood 
In the foreign night. — 
That now we are neared to them 
Thank we God. 



THE ENGLISH GRAVES 

The rains of yesterday are flown, 
And light is on the farthest hills ; 
The homeliest rough grass by the stone 
To radiance thrills ; 

And the wet bank above the ditch, 
Trailing its thorny bramble, shows 
Soft apparitions, clustered rich, 
Of the pure primrose. 

The shining stillness breathes, vibrates 
From simple earth to lonely sky, 
A hinted wonder that awaits 
The heart's reply. 

O lovely life ! the chaffinch sings 
High on the hazel, near and clear. 
Sharp to the heart's blood, sweetness 

springs 
In the morning here. 
84 



THE ENGLISH GRAVES 85 

But my heart goes with the young cloud 
That voyages the April light 
Southward, across the beaches loud 
And cliffs of white 

To fields of France, far fields that spread 
Beyond the tumbling of the waves, 
And touches as with shadowy tread 
The English graves. 

There too is Earth that never weeps, 
The unrepining Earth, that holds 
The secret of a thousand sleeps 
And there unfolds 

Flowers of sweet ignorance on the slope 
Where strong arms dropped and blood choked 

breath, 
Earth that forgets all things but hope 
And smiles on death. 

They poured their spirits out in pride, 
They throbbed away the price of years : 
Now that dear ground is glorified 
With dreams, with tears. 



86 THE CAUSE 

A flower there is sown, to bud 
And bloom beyond our loss and smart. 
Noble France, at its root is blood 
From England's heart. 



GOING WEST 

Just as I came 

Into the empty, westward-facing room, 
A sudden gust blew wide 
The tall window; at once 
A shock of sudden light, vibrating like a flame, 
Entered, as if it were the wind's bright spirit 
Stealing to me upon some secret quest. 
The wonder of the West 
Burst open ; under dark and rushing cloud 
That rained illumined drops, it glorified 
Each corner where so dazzlingly it struck : 
The shadows cowered, the brilliance over- 
flowed. 
As suddenly, all faded. 
Wet, wild air blew in 
At the idly-swinging door 
Stormily crumpled fallen shreds of leaves, 
Dried scarlet and burnt yellow and ashy-brown: 
They fluttered in like fears and blew across 

the floor. 
And I, to the heart invaded, 
87 



88 THE CAUSE 

Felt as that wild light palpitated through me 

And died in a moment down, 

Exalted by a visionary fear 

That from the light more than the shadow 

fell; 
A divination of splendid spirits near, 
Of glorious parting and of great farewell. 



FETCHING THE WOUNDED 

At the road's end glimmer the station lights ; 
How small beneath the immense hollow of 

Night's 
Lonely and living silence ! Air that raced 
And tingled on the eyelids as we faced 
The long road stretched between the poplars 

flying 
To the dark behind us, shuddering and sigh- 
ing 
With phantom foliage, lapses into hush. 
Magical supersession ! The loud rush 
Swims into quiet : midnight reassumes 
Its solitude ; there's nothing but great glooms, 
Blurred stars ; whispering gusts ; the hum of 

wires. 
And swerving leftwards upon noiseless tires 
We glide over the grass that smells of dew. 
A wave of wonder bathes my body through ! 
For there in the headlamps' gloom-surrounded 

beam 
Tall flowers spring before us, like a dream, 
89 



9 o THE CAUSE 

Each luminous little green leaf intimate 

And motionless, distinct and delicate 

With powdery white bloom fresh upon the 

stem, 
As if that clear beam had created them 
Out of the darkness. Never so intense 
I felt the pang of beauty's innocence, 
Earthly and yet unearthly. 

A sudden call ! 
We leap to ground, and I forget it all. 
Each hurries on his errand ; lanterns swing ; 
Dark shapes cross and re-cross the rails ; we 

bring 
Stretchers, and pile and number them ; and 

heap 
The blankets ready. Then we wait and keep 
A listening ear. Nothing comes yet; all's 

still. 
Only soft gusts upon the wires blow shrill 
Fitfully, with a gentle spot of rain. 
Then, ere one knows it, the long gradual train 
Creeps quietly in and slowly stops. No sound 
But a few voices' interchange. Around 
Is the immense night-stillness, the expanse 
Of faint stars over all the wounds of France, 



FETCHING THE WOUNDED 91 

Now stale odour of blood mingles with keen 
Pure smell of grass and dew. Now lantern 

sheen 
Falls on brown faces opening patient eyes 
And lips of gentle answers, where each lies 
Supine upon his stretcher, black of beard 
Or with young cheeks ; on caps and tunics 

smeared 
And stained, white bandages round foot or head 
Or arm, discoloured here and there with red. 
Sons of all corners of wide France ; from 

Lille, 
Douay, the land beneath the invader's heel, 
Champagne, Touraine, the fisher-villages 
Of Brittany, the valley ed Pyrenees, 
Blue coasts of the South, old Paris streets. 

Argonne 
Of ever smouldering battle, that anon 
Leaps furious, brothered them in arms. They 

fell 
In the trenched forest scarred with reeking 

shell. 
Now strange the sound comes round them in 

the night 
Of English voices. By the wavering light 



92 THE CAUSE 

Quickly we have borne them, one by one, to 

the air, 
And sweating in the dark lift up with care, 
Tense-sinewed, each to his place. The cars at 

last 
Complete their burden : slowly, and then fast 
We glide away. 

And the dim round of sky, 
Infinite and silent, broods unseeingly 
Over the shadowy uplands rolling black 
Into far woods, and the long road we track 
Bordered with apparitions, as we pass, 
Of trembling poplars and lamp-whitened grass, 
A brief procession flitting like a thought 
Through a brain drowsing into slumber; 

nought 
But we awake in the solitude immense ! 
But hurting the vague dumbness of my sense 
Are fancies wandering the night : there steals 
Into my heart, like something that one feels 
In darkness, the still presence of far homes 
Lost in deep country, and in little rooms 
The vacant bed. I touch the world of pain 
That is so silent. Then I see again 
Only those infinitely patient faces 



FETCHING THE WOUNDED 93 

In the lantern beam, beneath the night's vast 
spaces, 

Amid the shadows and the scented dew ; 

And those illumined flowers, springing anew 

In freshness like a smile of secrecy 

From the gloom-buried earth, returns to me. 

The village sleeps ; blank walls, and windows 
barred. 

But lights are moving in the hushed court- 
yard 

As we glide up to the open door. The Chief 
Gives every man his order, prompt and brief. 
We carry up our wounded, one by one. 
The first cock crows : the morrow is begun. 



THE EBB OF WAR 

In the seven-times taken and retaken town 
Peace ! The mind stops ; sense argues against 

sense. 
The August sun is ghostly in the street 
As if the Silence of a thousand years 
Were its familiar. All is as it was 
At the instant of the shattering : flat-thrown 

walls ; 
Dislocated rafters ; lintels blown awry 
And toppling over ; what were windows, merely 
Gapings on mounds of dust and shapelessness ; 
Charred posts caught in a bramble of twisted 

iron ; 
Wires sagging tangled across the street ; the 

black 
Skeleton of a vine wrenched from the old 

house 
It clung to; a limp bell-pull ; here and there 
Little printed papers pasted on the wall. 
It is like a madness crumpled up in stone, 
Laughterless, tearless, meaningless ; a frenzy 
94 



THE EBB OF WAR 95 

Stilled, like at ebb the shingle in sea-caves 
Where the imagined weight of water swung 
Its senseless crash with pebbles in myriads 

churned 
By the random seethe. But here was flesh 

and blood, 
Seeing eyes, feeling nerves ; memoried minds 
With the habit of the picture of these fields 
And the white roads crossing the wide green 

plain. 
All vanished ! One could fancy the very fields 
Were memory's projection, phantoms ! All 
Silent ! The stone is hot to the touching hand. 
Footsteps come strange to the sense. In the 

sloped churchyard, 
Where the tower shows the blue through 

its great rents, 
Shadow falls over pitiful wrecked graves, 
And on the gravel a bare-headed boy, 
Hands in his pockets, with brown absent eyes, 
Whistles the Marseillaise : To Arms, To Arms ! 
There is no other sound in the bright air. 
It is as if they heard under the grass, 
The dead men of the Marne, and their thin 

voice 



96 THE CAUSE 

Used those young lips to sing it from their 

graves, 
The song that sang a nation into arms. 
And far away to the listening ear in the 

silence 
Like remote thunder throb the guns of France. 

Maurupt 1915 



LA PATRIE 

Through storm-blown gloom the subtle light 

persists. 
Shapes of tumultuous, ghostly cloud appear, 
Trailing a dark shower from hill-drenching 

mists ; 
Dawn, desolate in majesty, is here. 

But ere the wayside trees show leaf and form, 

Invisible larks in all the air around 

Ripple their songs up through the gloom and 

storm, 
As if the foiled light had won wings of sound. 

A wounded soldier on his stretcher waits 

His turn for the ambulance, by the glimmer- 
ing rails. 

He is wrapt in a rough brown blanket like his 
mates ; 

And over him dawn broadens, the cloud pales. 

Muscular, swart, bearded, and quite still, 
He lies, too tired to think, to wonder. Drops 
97 



98 THE CAUSE 

From a leaf fall by him. For spent nerve and 

will 
The world of shattering and stunned effort 

stops. 

He feels the air, song-thrilled and fresh and 

dim, 
And close about him smells the rainy soil. 
It is ever-living Earth recovers him, 
Friend and companion of old, fruitful toil. 

He is patient with her patience. Hurt, he 

takes 
Strength from her rooted, still tenacities. 
Her will to heal, that secretly re-makes 
Like slumber, holds his dark, contented 

eyes. 

For she, though — never reckoning of the 

cost — 
Full germs of all profusion she prepares, 
Knows tragic hours, too, parching famine, 

frost 
And wreck ; and in her children's hurt she 

shares. 



LA PATRIE 99 

Build what we may, house us in lofty mind's 
Palaces, wean the fine-wrought spirit apart, 
Earth touches where the fibre throbs, and 

winds 
The threads about us of her infinite heart. 

And some dear ground with its own changing 

sky, 
As if it were our feeling flesh, is wrought 
Into the very body's dignity 
And private colour of least conscious thought. 

O when the loud invader burned and bruised 
This ordered land's old kindness, with brute 

blows 
Shamed and befouled and plundered and 

abused, 
Was it not Earth that in her soldier rose 

And armed him, terrible and simple ? He 
Takes his wound, mute as Earth is, yet as 

strong. 
The funeral clouds trail, wet wind shakes the 

tree, 
But all the wild air of the dawn is song. 

Lairecy 1916 



THE DISTANT GUNS 

Negligently the cart-track descends into the 

valley ; 
The drench of the rain has passed, and the 

clover breathes ; 
Scents are abroad ; in the valley a mist 

whitens 
Along the hidden river, where the evening 

smiles. 
The trees are asleep, their shadows are longer 

and longer, 
Melting blue in the tender twilight ; above, 
In a pallor barred with lilac and ashen cloud 
Delicate as a spirit the young moon brightens ; 
And, distant, a bell intones the hour of peace 
Where roofs of the village, grey and red, 

cluster 
In leafy dimness. Peace, old as the world ! 
The crickets, shrilling in the high, wet grass, 
And gnats clouding upon the frail wild roses, 
Murmur of you. But hark ! like a shudder 

upon the air 

ioo 



THE DISTANT GUNS 101 

Ominous and alien, knocking on the farther 
hills 

As with airy hammers, the ghosts of terrible 
sound — 

Guns ! From afar they are knocking on hu- 
man hearts 

Everywhere over the silent evening country, 

Knocking with fear and dark presentiment. 
Only 

The moon's beauty, where no life or joy is, 

Brightening softly and seeing nothing, has 
peace. 

Arc-en-Barrois 1916 



MEN OF VERDUN 

There are five men in the moonlight 
That by their shadows stand. 

Three hobble humped on crutches, 
And two lack each a hand. 

Frogs somewhere near the roadside 
Chorus their chant absorbed : 

But a hush breathes out of the dream-light 
That far in heaven is orbed. 

It is gentle as sleep falling 

And wide as thought can span, 

The ancient peace and wonder 
That brims the heart of man. 

Beyond the hills it shines now 

On no peace but the dead, 
On reek of trenches thunder-shocked, 
Tense fury of wills in wrestle locked, 

A chaos crumbled red ! 
102 



MEN OF VERDUN 103 

The five men in the moonlight 

Chat, joke, or gaze apart. 
They talk of days and comrades, 

But each one hides his heart. 

They wear clean cap and tunic 
As when they went to war ; 

A gleam comes where the medal 's pinned ; 
But they will fight no more. 

The shadows maimed and antic 

Gesture and shape distort, 
Like mockery of a demon dumb 
Out of the hell-din whence they come 

That dogs them for his sport : 

But as if dead men were risen 

And stood before me there 
With a terrible fame about them blown 

In beams of spectral air, 

I see them now, transfigured 

As in a dream, dilate 
Fabulous with the Titan-throb 

Of battling Europe's fate. 



104 THE CAUSE 

For history 's hushed before them, 
And legend flames afresh ; 

Verdun, the name of thunder, 
Is written on their flesh. 



ENGLAND'S POET 

To other voices, other majesties, 
Removed this while, Peace shall resort again. 
But he was with us in our darkest pain 
And stormiest hour : his faith royally dyes 
The colours of our cause ; his voice replies 
To all our doubt, dear spirit ! heart and vein 
Of England's old adventure ! his proud strain 
Rose from our earth to the sea-breathing skies. 

Even over chaos and the murdering roar 
Comes that world-winning music, whose full 

stops 
Sounded all man, the bestial and divine; 
Terrible as thunder, fresh as April drops. 
He stands, he speaks, the soul-transfigured 

sign 
Of all our story, on the English shore. 
105 



THE SIBYLS 

Rending the waters of a night unknown 
The ship with tireless pulses bore me, 
On the shadowy deck musing late and lone, 
Over waste ocean. 

The rustling of the cordage in the dewy wind 
And the sound of idle surges 
Falling prolonged and for ever again up- 
thrown 
Drowsed me; I slept, I dreamed. 

Out of the seas that streamed 
In ghostly turbulence moving and glimmer- 
ing about me 
I saw the rising of vast and visionary forms. 

Like clouds, like continents of cloud, they rose, 
August as the shape of storms 
In the silence before the thunder, or of moun- 
tains 
Alone in a sky of sunken light : they rose 
Slowly, with shrouded grandeur 
1 06 



THE SIBYLS 107 

Of queenly bosom and shoulder ; and afar 

Their countenances were lifted, although 
veiled, 

Although heavy as with thought and with si- 
lence, 

In the heights where dimly gathered 

Star upon solitary star. 

And it seemed to me, as I dreamed, 

That these were the forms of the Sibyls of 

old, 
Prophetesses whose eyes were aflame with in- 
terior fire, 
Who passionately prophesied and none com- 
prehended, 
In the womb of whose thought was quickened 

the world's desire, 
Who saw, and because they saw, chastised 
With voices terribly chanting on the wind 
The folly of the faithlessness of men. 

But not as they haunted then 
In cavernous and wild places, 
Each inaccessibly sequestered 
And sought with furtive steps 



108 THE CAUSE 

Through wizard leaves of whispering laurel 

feared, 
Now to me they appeared. 
But rather like Queens of fabulous dominion, 
Like Queens, voices of a voiceless people, 
Queens of old time, with aweing faces, 
With burdened brows but with proud eyes, 
Assembled in solemn parley, to shape 
Futurity and the nations' glory and doom, 
They were met in the night together. 

And lo ! beneath them 
The immeasurable circle of the gloom 
Phantasmally disclosed 
In apparition all the coasts of the world, 
Veined with rivers afar to the frozen moun- 
tains. 
And I saw the shadow of maniac Death 
Like a reveller there stagger glutted and 

gloating. 
I saw murdered cities 
That raised like a stiffened arm 
One blackened tower to heaven ; I saw 
Processions of the homeless crawling into the 
distances ; 



THE SIBYLS 109 

And sullen leagues of interminable battle ; 
And peoples arming afar ; the very earth, 
The very bowels of the earth infected 
With the rages and the agonies of men. 
For a moment the vision gleamed, and then 

was gone. 
Gloom rushed down like rain. 
But out of the midst of the darkness 
My flesh was aware of a sound, 
The peopled sound of moving millions 
And the voices of human pain. 

I lifted my gaze to the Sibyls, 
The Sibyls of the Continents, where they rose 
Looking one on another. 
Ancestral Asia, mother of musing mind, 
Was there ; and over against her 
Towered in the gates of the West a shape 
Of youth gigantic, troubled and vigilant ; 
Patient with eager dumbness in dark eyes, 
Africa rose ; and ardent out of the South 
The youngest of those great sisters ; and proud, 
With fame upon her for mantle, and regal- 
browed, 
The stature of Europe old. 



no THE CAUSE 

It seemed they listened to the murmur 

Of the anguished lands beneath them 

In sombre reverberation rising and upward 

rolled. 
Everywhere battle and arming for battle, 
Famine and torture, odour of burning and blood, 
Doubt, hatred, terror, 
Rage and lamenting ! 

I heard sweet Pity crying between the earth 

and sky : 
But who had leisure for her call? or who 

hearkened to her cry ? 

Not with our vision, and not with our horizon 

The gaze of the Sibyls was filled. 

Their trouble was trouble beyond the shaping 

of our fear, 
Their hope full-sailed upon oceans beyond our 

ken; 
Their thoughts were the thoughts that build 
Towers for the dawn unseen. 

But nearer than ever before 
They drew to each other, sister to shrouded 
sister, 



THE SIBYLS in 

Queen to superb Queen. 

What counsel took they together? or what 

word 
Of power- and of parturition 
Passed their lips ? What saw they, 
Conferring among the stars ? 
My blood tingled, and I heard 
Syllables, O too vast 
For capacity of my ears ; yet within me, 
In the innermost bones and caves of my 

being 
I felt a voice like the voice of a sea, 
And the sound of it seemed to be crying: 

" Endure ! 
Humble yourselves, O dreamers of dreams, 
In whose bosom is peril fiercer than fire or 

beast, 
Humble yourselves, O desolaters of your 

own dreams, 
Then arise and remember ! 
Though now you cry in astonishment and an- 
guish 
'What have we done to the beauty of the 

world 
That ruins about us in ashes and blood ? ' 



112 THE CAUSE 

Remember the Spirit that moulded and made 

you 
In the beauty of the body 
Shaped as the splendour of speech to thought, 
The Spirit that wills with one desire, 
With infinite else unsatisfied desire, 
Peace not made by conquerors and armies, 
Peace born in the soul, that asks not shelter 

or a pillow. 
The peace of truth, unshaken amid the thunder, 
Unaffrighted by fury of shrivelling fire, 
And neither time nor tempest, 
Neither slumber nor calamity, 
Neither rending of the flesh nor breaking of 

the heart, 
Shall stay you from that desire." 

That sound floated like a cloud in heaven, 

Lingering ; and like an answer 

Came the sound of the rushing of spirits 

triumphant, 
Of young men dying for a cause. 

I lifted my eyes in wonder, 
And silence filled me. 



THE SIBYLS 113 

And with the silence I was aware 

Of a breath moving in the glimmer of the air. 

The stars had vanished ; but again 

I beheld those Sibyls august 

Over stilled ocean, 

And on their faces the dawn. 

Even as I looked they lifted up their heads, 

They lifted their heads, like eagles 

That slowly shake and widen their wondrous 

wings ; 
They arose and vanished like the stars. 
The light of the changed world, the world 

new-born, 
Brimmed over the silence of the seas ; 
But even in the rising of its beam 
I remembered the light in their eyes. 



BEFORE THE DAWN 

Blacker the night grows ere the dawn be 

risen, 
Keener the cost, and fiercer yet the fight. 
But hark ! above the thunder and the terror 
A trumpet blowing splendid through the night. 

It is the challenge of our dead undying, 
Calling, Remember ! We have died for you. 
It is the cry of perilled earth's hereafter — 
Sons of our sons — Be glorious ! Be true ! 

> 
Now in the hour when either world is witness, 
Never or now shall we be proven great, 
Rise to the height of all our strain and story, 
Aye, and beyond ! For we ourselves are Fate. 
114 



TO THE END 

Because the storm has stript us bare 
Of all things but the thing we are, 
Because our faith requires us whole, 
And we are seen to the very soul, 
Rejoice ! From now all meaner fears are fled. 

Because we have no prize to win 

Auguster than the truth within, 

And by consuming of the dross 

Magnificently lose our loss, 

Rejoice ! We have not vainly borne and bled. 

Because we chose beyond recall 

And for dear honour hazard all, 

And summoned to the last attack 

Refuse to falter or look back, 

Rejoice! We die, the Cause is never dead. 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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